Kantian Naturalist: You simply have not provided any account of truth, reason, and logic. Until you do, there is no reason for me to believe that a correct understanding of these concepts has anything at all to do with God.
Some initial first thoughts.
What would it mean to provide an account of truth, reason, and logic? Don’t all of us take all three of these for granted?
Can science settle the question of what would it take to provide an account of truth, reason, and logic?
If science cannot settle the question of what would it take to provide an account of truth, reason, and logic, what does that tell us about the question?
If science cannot settle the question of what would it take to provide an account of truth, reason, and logic, what does that tell us about science?
Who were the first scientists to ask and attempt to answer these questions and what answers did they offer?
Who were the first philosophers to ask and attempt to answer these questions and what answers did they offer?
Is the argument that because someone has not provided an account of truth, reason, and logic there is therefore no reason to believe that a correct understanding of these concepts has nothing at all to do with God a non-sequitur?
What is true. What is logical. What is reasonable. Are these not all inter-twined? Which of these can we dispense with while retaining the others?
For the record, what I’m saying is not that UCD has a stronger fit for the evidence, but that there’s no reason why we should observe what we do if UCD was false. So many independent lines of evidence converge into the same explanation that, looking at the big picture, it makes no sense to deny what has become a fact: UCD is a fact
Wait. This claim of yours, is it a scientific fact? No. Is it then more certain or less certain than scientific facts? You’re saying there are facts and then there are scientific facts, and the latter are closer to being fact that the former. That’s absurd.
Public schools.
Calling Richardthughes, do you have any of that thread left over!
You see fifth, whether or not we could actually know that the fossil was a fossil of a rabbit is really quite irrelevant to the theory.
If we found this in the Cambrian would it falsify evolution?
http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/4cell-stage-of-rabbit-embryo-picture-id128590975?s=170667a
peace
How could I not suppose that?
peace
Yes, apparently we don’t need to know that a fossil is not a rabbit to assume that it is not a rabbit because if we did otherwise it would mean that evolution perhaps is not true and to do that would be unthinkable.
At least that seems to be the argument
peace
As I see it, the most plausible view is that a fact is a true claim, relative to a conceptual framework that is currently in use by a community. (This is to avoid putting “fact” on the world’s side of things, which would make the world a totality of facts. Contra the early Wittgenstein, the world is a totality of things, not facts.)
Since there are many different conceptual frameworks (or, if you prefer, our discourse is ‘polydimensional’), there are many different kinds of facts: moral facts, mathematical facts, aesthetic facts, and of course empirical facts.
(To say that it is a fact that Iron Man used to be Tony Stark is to say that it is true that Iron Man used to be Tony Stark, relative to the conceptual framework of the Marvel comic-books.)
Empirical facts can be about what is near and close to us in time and space, and thus easily established with our unaided sensory receptiveness and conceptual responsiveness to sensory receptivity.
But when it comes to objects and events much further remote from us in time and in space, or which do not easily fit into our unaided sensory and conceptual abilities, we need to rely on techniques and technologies of various kinds that bring more of the world into our cognitive grasp — and likewise revising our conceptual frameworks to accommodate the discoveries that our techniques and technologies make possible.
That’s not a difference in the kind of fact — scientific facts are not a different kind from empirical facts — but a difference in the methodology that gives us a cognitive grip on the objects that in turn licenses or warrants the claim being made.
To say that UCD is a fact is, as best I understand, a shorthand way of saying that it is more reasonable to accept UCD than it is to deny it, given the consilience across multiple lines of evidence and our best current models of why we observe the consilience that we do.
If the data or the model were to change sufficiently radically, our successors would have to say that we were mistaken about what the facts were.
Hi KN,
I think that offers a nice transition into a position you offered earlier, that truth is a property of statements/propositions.
So I wonder how it is that this property of statements called truth only appears at certain times and in certain places, and is absent in others, and whether truth exists in some circumstances and it does not exist in other circumstances, and how we can tell whether it is present or absent.
Can something be a fact if it is not true?
As I see it, if someone states that some proposition or condition is factual, they are doing no more and no less than declaring that it is true. Can there be facts that are more or less true, or more or less factual?
Are there facts about facts, and are those facts about facts revealed to us by the methods of science, or are they known otherwise?
So in the middle ages special creation would have been a fact?
How could we be mistaken if calling something a fact is merely a shorthand way of saying that it is more reasonable to accept it than it is to deny it, given the consilience across multiple lines of evidence and our best current models of why we observe the consilience that we do.
If facts are not connected to truth how does ever make sense to say we are mistaken about them as long as we adhere to our current models and the known evidence?
peace
Either that or facts are no indicator of knowledge. Perhaps it is facts which provide justification for belief, even if those facts are not true.
This seems right to me.
And when somebody asserts, as a theory of truth, that truth is correspondence to the facts, that seems completely circular.
Is that what the correspondence theory of truth asserts? Or does it deny that some statement is factual if it fails to correspond to the way things actually are?
Mung,
How do you establish a scientific fact? I know we use data to establish a hypothesis and testing to validate a hypothesis but all science is tentative so saying a collection of data results in a scientific fact seems outside of the practice of science.
Are we dealing with science here or scientism making a sales pitch to the public?
It’s a clear case of scientism. All facts are scientific facts, but it is not a fact that “all facts are scientific facts” is a scientific fact.
By using the methodology of a branch of science. A scientific fact is provisional, because science is provisional. Would you expect it otherwise?
Now you are being just being silly.
https://youtu.be/J3I97IFc_zU
I would think so, the Church dominated western thought. The problem with special creation is that there are no entailments. The downside of omnipotence
It depends on which version.
So when you say something is a scientific fact you really mean that it’s just the opinion that is the most popular right now?
Sure sounds like a sales pitch to me.
If a theist did such a thing we would be accused of equivocation.
if I understand what we are being asked to swallow correctly a scientific fact is not a real fact but it is what is claimed with out any evidence to be the closest thing to a real fact we have.
indeed
peace
So special creation was a scientific fact up point that the Church no longer dominated western thought?
WOW
It sure sounds like scientific fact is really just another way to say popular opinion.
Is that really what we have come to here?
It’s really sad to see what happens when truth is not valued
quote:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. ———————–Claiming to be wise, they became fools,
(Rom 1:18-22)
end quote:
peace
Scientific facts like knowledge is not certain, we make the best guess,the passage of time tests those guesses. The same data can support multiple truths.
Guesses are not facts. Not even close.
Tested guesses are just that tested guesses.
Testing does not make a guess knowledge.
Truth makes a tested guess knowledge
peace
Scientific facts may not be true. Scientific facts may not provide knowledge. But scientific facts are the best!
Can the same data support apposing truths?
peace
Exactly, that the Earth is spherical is just an opinion that is popular now.
So you are saying that the contention that the earth is spherical is different than the idea of common decent?
Is it a regular fact or merely a scientific fact that the earth is spherical?
Was a flat earth a scientific fact in the ancient world?
peace
PS I would argue that a flat earth was never the most popular opinion but lets leave that aside for the sake of argument
Yes. That’s actually a majority view among professional philosophers. Truth is a property of propositions or sentences. The question is, how best to understand this property?
I think that you are creating mysteries for yourself that are best avoided.
Firstly, truth is not an entity or object or thing or being of any sort. There’s nothing but endless confusion if one reifies truth.
(Put otherwise: just because “truth” is a noun, it doesn’t follow that the word “truth” refers to a thing. Don’t be misled by grammar!)
Secondly, once we recognize that it is sentences (or propositions, if you believe in stuff like that) that are true or false, then we need to ask “by virtue of what?”
Here opinions diverge.
A defender of the correspondence theory of truth will say that a proposition is true just in case it matches or aligns with how the world is. If the stickers line up with the empty places in the sticker-book, then the sentence is true.
There are, shall we say, a few problems with this approach.
The first is that no one has been able to figure out how sentence-like things are supposed to correspond with non-sentence-like things. How you get from the causal and spatio-temporal relations between objects to the syntactical relations between terms? No one seems to have any idea.
The second is that no one has any idea how we could ever be in the right epistemic position to know whether correspondence has been achieved. In order to know that our thoughts correspond with reality, we would have to be able to step outside of our thoughts in order to ‘see’ which of them line up with reality and which ones do not.
Since we can’t step outside of our own minds, and since we can’t even understand what correspondence would mean if we could, the correspondence theory of truth has some drawbacks.
Which is not to say that other theories of truth fare any better. The coherence theory of truth leaves us with a worry that our thoughts might hang together perfectly well but not make any contact with the world, and deflationary theories of truth, while interesting, fail to account for our ordinary sense that truth is an epistemic goal — that one of the reasons why we want justified beliefs is because justification is a criterion of truth.
I don’t see how.
I’d put it rather as follows: science has authority over what the empirical facts are, but not all facts are empirical facts. And the analysis of the concept of fact is philosophical. So while science tells us what the facts are, philosophy tells us what it is for something to be a fact.
Or, as a friend of mine likes to say, science tells us what is and philosophy tells us what ‘what is’ is.
You asked if it was a fact,not if it was a scientific fact. Though that is just my opinion which is popular now with me and the written word.
Does it?
opinion:a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.
Well, a SF is a view or judgement, good so far,
Oops, not necessarily That seems problematic since a scientific fact is necessarily based of fact or knowledge which we all agree does not require certainty .
It sounds like to me that the use of ” opinion” might be unintentionally misleading the reader into a false conclusion.
let’s look at “popular”, is it accepted because it is popular or is it popular because based on facts and/ or knowledge it has explanatory breadth?
Which one is the truth you were trying to convey?
Make science great again?
Funny thing, I was thinking the same thing
Ships disappearing over the horizon is a fact based on observation,that fact leads to the guess/ hypothesis is earth is round. That guess is tested , the facts obtained from the testing are compared to the guess. So guesses/ hypotheses are based on facts, use facts to determine the accuracy of the guess and can result in facts.
Testing Is a way you can determine the truth of the guess.Strangely even a untrue guess can provide knowledge, knowing what is false helps to know what is true.
If
(1) facts are nothing more than true claims, and
(2) true claims are just the claims that are correctly assertible within the conceptual framework actually being used at a time and place,
then certainly special creation and geocentrism were held to be facts by medieval theologians and natural philosophers. They just aren’t (and can’t be) facts for us, because we don’t use those conceptual frameworks. We have found, through the efforts of Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Lyell, Darwin, Mendel, and many others, that there are fatally serious problems with Aristotelian physics and biology. We could no more use the physics and biology of Aristotle than we could that of the Mayans. It is a world that no longer makes sense to us.
That said, I do not want to endorse the postmodern gesture of saying that the world does not constrain what we say about it. It does –but not by virtue of containing “facts” or fact-shaped objects among its constituents.
Rather, what I want to say here is that it is the causal and modal structure of the world that determines how useful a conceptual structure is for coordinating our interests and desires with successful actions.
What tests did you conduct to determine the truth of this claim?
peace
you are going to have to spell out the differences between scientific facts and nonscientific facts.
I’m pretty unclear about the whole thing.
It seems to be that you claim that scientific facts are provisional and tentative depending on our present knowledge and conceptual framework while regular facts are not so constrained but are instead constrained by truth.
is that the claim?
peace
I didn’t but I think there is more evidence for the former than the later
What is a regular fact?
Among whom?
peace
Popular opinion is not necessarily the scientific consensus.
I touched two wires I guessed were controlled by the breaker I turned off
The question is not whether they were held to be facts but whether they were actual “scientific” facts at that time. Or possibly nonscientific facts what ever that might mean
That is a mouth full.
what exactly is the “causal and modal structure of the world” and how can we determine it objectively.
peace
Mung,
Could we call it a scientism fact 🙂
I have no idea. I contend that
1) there are no scientific facts only facts.
2) facts are simply true claims
It’s your side that is claiming some sort of tested guess verses true claim dichotomy when it comes to a scientific fact as apposed to all other facts
peace
Already did
Bummer
Not sure if there is any criteria for a regular facts except the claim that it is a fact, the truth seems irrelevant it helps the argument.You seem to believe otherwise.
It seems it is yours.
peace
I know, scientific consensus is the popular opinion of the cool kids
😉
peace
Yep, chicks dig lab coats.
what does that even mean how can something be irrelevant if it helps the argument? What exactly is the argument?
That a fact is a true claim seems to be definitional? that is after all what the word means.
quote:
: something that truly exists or happens : something that has actual existence
: a true piece of information
end quote:
from here http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fact
It’s your claim that a flat earth and special creation were facts at one time.
I would counter that a flat earth was never a fact scientific or otherwise
peace
“We’ve been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of the culture.”
— Pastor Ray Mummert
newton,
Would you agree that Universal Common Descent is a hypothesis based on historical observation of the fossil record and genetic data as a collection of facts?
And what did we get for it?
Planes, trains, and automobiles, computers, chemistry, physics, electricity.
How does that stack up against some old fables?
Glen Davidson
“Facts” are good solid information–in the vernacular. Useful term–Just here to get the facts, and all.
That said, “fact” isn’t really much of a science term at all. Science has data, it has theories, hypotheses, and models. It doesn’t deal in facts, really (in the vernacular, maybe it does, but are data really facts?), but in interpretations of the data. I’m not saying that you won’t get claims of scientific “fact” from scientists, but that it’s a more popular and sloppy way of talking about data and conclusions that can be considered to be quite reliable.
I wouldn’t get too hung up on a word like “fact” that really isn’t much of a scientific term or consideration.
Glen Davidson
ok, can a true claim be provisional?
I am a pragmatist, give me a better way
Give me some examples of all these other facts about the material world the you know are true non provisionally. it would be nice to have evidence of a way to test them.
I’m happy to say that facts are just whatever claims are taken as true relative to the conceptual framework actually in use (hence also taken as useful). But the idea of a distinction between scientific facts and non-scientific empirical facts doesn’t seem particularly useful to me. Perhaps it indicates a distinction between the community of experts and the community of non-experts?
But the beliefs held as true by a community of experts rely on the specialized know-how required to use and evaluate the various techniques and technologies that bring “perceptually opaque phenomena” (things that very small, very big, very far away, or very old) into our conceptual grasp.
The question, “why should we accept the findings of science when they conflict with our unscientific beliefs and assumptions about ourselves and the world?” is therefore inseparable from the question, “why should we trust the authority of experts when it conflicts with the authority of non-experts?”
In service of the greater truth
The curvature of the earth drops 8 inches per mile, that is beyond our ability to discern. So observably flat. To such an observer it is true the earth is flat. The observer did not know what he didn’t know, true size of the earth.
Special creation was and is viewed as true based on an infallible religious text.Any deviation from that view was met with discouragement. For many depending on their concept of the world ,it is a fact
Funny you didn’t include special creation. To me within the ability and conception of the observer it was a fact the earth was flat. He was mistaken when we use a different concept of earth.
Take your paraphrase of scientific fact as “opinion”, it true SF could be said to be a view based on facts and knowledge, but it is false that SF is a view not based on facts and knowledge. The definition encompasses both possibilities.
So is a fact or not that SF is “opinion”? Or just your opinion which not necessarily is based on facts or knowledge?